So what do you do with cheats? Fix the record says Curt Schilling:
Schilling also had some choice things to say about Jose Canseco, the former Major League All-Star who has freely admitted to using steroids, and who detailed his usage in a 2005 book. “Jose Canseco admitted he cheated his entire career,” said Schilling. “Everything he ever did should be wiped clean. I think his MVP should go back and should go to the runnerup.” Former Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell, who finished second in the 1988 American League MVP race, has stated numerous times that he thinks the trophy should be taken away from Canseco and given to him.
This is entirely reasonable. Sports rely on integrity as much as tradition and performance to attract our attention and gain our devotion. So there is no reason not to fix the wrong of these records any more than there is no reason to consider Ben Johnson a champion.
But can the principle be extended? Sports is something of a last bastion of the appearance of integrity it seems. We have celebrity crooks like Conrad Black, Martha Stewart and Lindsay Lohan – not to mention political criminals like Scooter Libby and maybe even our own Senator Eric Berntson. Why do they, too, not meet with the universal castigation they deserve so richly? We have fallen into a trap as a culture of fretting about the institutions by which we judge our wrong-doers. To what end? Who gains? It operates in a very similar way to how professional sports leagues and international sports bodies circle wagons to insulate themselves from taint. It is a reaction, of course. The same sort of reaction that you hear these days from people who actually suggest that if you do not understand dog fighting you do not understand the US South. Others are blamed. The wrong is diminished.
We fail to address wrongs at our own peril as sooner or later we stop being able to tell right from wrong…and then stop even being able to trust that there is right and wrong. A moral vacuum is created. So ask why those empowered to determine things are undermined by cranks and naysayers when you see it happen. Ask why, too, when the person so empowered does not act.